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“When you arise in the morning, think what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.”
– Marcus Aurelius

It is often said, in spiritual circles, the path to enlightenment is to let go of desire – we are to become desireless to find peace.

I say, we are to embrace our desires and our LONGING to find PASSION, JOY, EXCITEMENT, LIFE!!!!

Give voice to, accept, acknowledge, admit, and honor your innermost longing – that thing that seems so unreachable, so huge, so terrifying that you don’t even want to admit to yourself that you want it. Yeah, embrace that MOTHERFUCKER!

Have I completely lost it???

Probably.

But think about it. You know that nagging pain in your ankle, neck, back, head, stomach, HEART, that you can’t explain and seems to come and go??? Or maybe just that growing feeling that your very soul is slowly dieing???

If you have a deep inner longing, a passionate desire, that you are not acknowledging, then you know what I’m talking about because that desire is trying to make itself known through your body and emotions, and it will not stop until you let it out! Even if it’s just a silent scream to the heavens, “I WANT THIS!”

If you are trying to bury your deepest desires, it fucking hurts. So let that shit out. Own it.

You’re only holding it in because you have convinced yourself, and allowed other people to convince you, that you cannot have what you desire.

So you’re afraid of it. You lock it away, and shove it down, and suppress it, but it hurts so much more to deny your desires, and you know it.

“I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

It feels awful to have a desire when you have convinced yourself you cannot have it; it feels joyous and exciting to have a desire and to KNOW it is already yours, and then to experience and participate in the manifestation of it.

And that is only the difference between saying “I want it BUT I can’t have it for this reason, and this reason…..”, and saying “I want it AND I don’t yet know how I will get it, but I am excited to find out!”

Seriously, we cannot be desireless. It is not human nature, or even the nature of any living being, and it would be so Goddamn boring!

We incarnated into these physical bodies to experience life! This is the adventure package all expenses paid vacation!

“What if we tried Owning Surrender by letting go? Not letting go of our dreams, our goals, our hopes, our relationships – but rather, letting go of how we think we can MAKE them happen. Having faith enough in the universe that what is meant for you will occur, and that your only job is to dream up the picture, intend it, bless it, and then to let go and enjoy the ride.”

And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, “This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this!”

And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, “No. This is what’s important.”

Iain Thomas

I’m a big believer in the power of meditation to improve your state of mind and help you to become more focused. Most importantly, I believe that establishing a meditation practice is key to really reaping those benefits, as opposed to just meditating every now and then, or whenever you take a yoga class.

Lately I’ve really let my meditation practise slide; in fact my whole self-care routine has fallen apart, and I’ve really been noticing the side effects of this, as my thoughts have become more scattered, my emotions more volatile, and my energy levels decreased.

This often happens when we go through big changes in life, like moving or starting a new job etc… It’s important to get back on track as soon as possible.

If you don’t already have a self-care routine, consider starting one; it’s a wonderful way to begin and end every day, and can involve any activities you feel help you to relax and relieve stress. Taking time out of every day to take care of yourself promotes a feeling of self-worth that is not reliant on anyone or anything else. It sends the message “I am important and being kind and loving to myself is important to me”.

For a start, you can try this heart opening meditation I started this morning. It’s a variation on a meditation I used to do every morning, that I called “being a cup”. I was inspired to refine the visualization this morning and felt compelled to share it. It’s very simple, and I found myself feeling incredibly light and open afterwards.

First get into a comfortable seated position, preferably upright since you don’t want to fall asleep. Close your eyes and begin focusing on your breathing. Breathe in and out in long deep breaths through your nose, completely filling and emptying your lungs.

I’d love to be able to sit with each of you and teach you proper deep breathing, but unfortunately that’s not possible. The best way I can describe it is you feel like you are pulling air in through the back of your throat, instead of sniffing air in through your nostrils, even though you are still breathing through your nose. If you are doing this correctly, you should feel your air passages opening, and deep breaths of 8 counts in and 8 counts out should seem easy. When I am breathing deeply, pausing between breaths can be the most relaxing part of the meditation, because it’s the closest the body ever comes to stillness (while living of course!).

This isn’t the most important part though, so don’t worry if you haven’t got the knack of it yet. Just breathe deeply in a rhythm that seems easy to you.

Once you have a good rhythm going with your breath, and you’re starting to feel relaxed, then you can begin the visualization, if you’d like. It’s perfectly alright to just continue focusing on your breath, if you want. You may find thoughts popping up and your mind keeps wandering. Do not be deterred; simply bring your attention back to your breath, over and over. This is a practise in focus that will serve you well in future.

While you are breathing deeply in, filling your lungs from the bottom to the top, imagine you are a cup, a crystal clear goblet, and golden bubbly liquid like champagne is being poured in through the top of your head, your crown chakra. Feel your heart center being filled by this golden liquid, or light. Then, as you exhale, expelling all of the air from the bottom of your lungs to the top, imagine that golden light pouring out from your heart center.

Fill your cup completely, and then empty it completely.

Breathe in the Unconditional Love from Source, then breathe it all back out into the world, in no particular direction, just become a conduit for Love, indiscriminately pouring forth into the world.

Feel how every time you empty your heart, you are then filled again, how their is no ending to the eternal Love of Source.

Know that you can give all of your Love without fear, without needing to receive anything in return, because you will always be renewed.

Feel how your opening creates a void, and that Source Love rushes in to fill that void every time.

Know that the Love you are now a conduit for, that is now pouring from you, will find other voids to fill; you do not need to direct it.

Feel the surety of knowing that you always have access to that Eternal Unconditional Love.

I recommend 30 minutes twice a day, but you can start with less and work your way up to , or even exceed 30 minutes. If the Buddhist monks can meditate for 3 hours (YIKES!) every morning and evening, then the rest of us can manage 30 minutes.

Remember that this practise is for self-care and showing Loving kindness to yourself; if you are having to force it, beyond just the initial struggle to begin, then perhaps, for that morning, being kind to yourself is letting yourself off the hook! Perhaps, hitting a punching bag or going for a run, or some other cathartic activity, might be what you are needing. You may even feel like meditating afterwards. Remember also that your own fears and doubts may put up roadblocks to your self-care.

In my opinion, listening to your own inner guidance, and honoring the impulses that you receive from within, is the greatest form of kindness and respect you can show yourself. You will know true guidance because it will feel really good to listen to it; letting fears or doubts get in the way of self expansion will not feel good.

“If you meditate regularly, even when you don’t feel like it, you will make great gains, for it will allow you to see how your thoughts impose limits on you. Your resistances to meditation are your mental prisons in miniature.” – Ram Dass

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” – Rumi

I was up insanely early one morning, because my subconscious decided to throw some deep shit at me, right in that space between sleep and awake, when we are most open to information. For me, for anyone else that needs to hear it, let me lay it down.

It all came together after a discussion one night with a few people about pain and about taking responsibility for your own feelings, a topic I have discussed here before. I realized that one person in the discussion was not taking responsibility for their feelings, and in doing so, they were giving another power over them. As long as you give another responsibility for your feelings, you give them your power! That’s a big realization for me!

For this post I’ll call them X and Y.

The reason X was able to take Y’s power like that is because Y had already given it up. Y talked about X attacking their past abuse, and that being a weakness for them. What that means is, Y still had not taken responsibility for their pain from those previous attacks. Until Y can find a way to own their feelings about their past, Y will be giving those past events power over themselves, power that people like X can and will use.

Of course, the obvious question is, what do I mean by owning your feelings, or taking responsibility for your pain?

In my post, “Fear and Control”, I talked about how all we really have control over is our own happiness, or, our own emotions. This is what I mean by owning your pain. I mean to recognize that you are the one in control; you are the one who is choosing to be in pain.
This can seem very callous, especially when dealing with issues like childhood abuse, but it is not meant as a judgement, or to place blame with the victim. It is about freeing them from the victim mentality; to free them from the very idea that they are a victim. It is all about taking your power back.

This is not to say that abuse is good or right. No, it is to say that all psychological pain you feel is still your responsibility, and you will always be the victim, in your own mind, until you take responsibility for, or ownership of, your pain.
When you can say “those events happened to me, those people were wrong to do that to me, I feel pain over those events” then you have taken the first step.

The next step is to release all pain and other negative emotions associated with those events. This can be very difficult, and I highly recommend getting the help of someone you trust with this. I use the techniques of EMDR and EFT for clearing emotions. You may have others that work for you. The point is. To complete the next step, and be truly free from those past events, and the idea of victimization, you must reach a point where you can recall those events in detail and say ” those events happened to me and I felt pain”, without feeling the pain in the present moment. They are merely events that happened in the past.

Then you will have owned your pain and released it. Then, anyone can say whatever they want about your past, and it will not hurt you. The events have no power over you, so, therefore, others cannot gain power over you.

This idea really applies to all areas of life. Far too often we react to the people, conditions, or events around us, without exercising conscious control over our own thoughts and emotions. When things we like happen, we feel good, when things we don’t like happen, we feel bad. This may seem a perfectly normal, and even acceptable, way of going about life, but it puts you on an emotional roller coaster ride that you can’t get off of!

You cannot control all the conditions in your life.

Other people’s actions, chance events, weather, the economy…. these are all out of your control.

If how you feel is dependent on these conditions, then you are completely out of control.

And I think a lot of people really do feel out of control.

This is what this post is about: TAKING YOUR POWER BACK!

Do not give responsibility, or control of how you feel, and your own happiness, to anyone or anything, other than yourself. Period.

So I keep screwing up this attraction thing. I keep attracting the things I want, but then, when they’re almost in my grasp, something goes wrong and they slip through my fingers. Or it seems like I’ve got what I want, but then it blows up in my face, and I find out that wasn’t really what I wanted after all.

As I said in my last post on the Law of Attraction, we don’t really know what we want, we just know we want to be happy. The trick is we focus on the things we think will make us happy instead of actual happiness.

So why do things keep going wrong when I try to attract the things I think I want? Because I am still trying to be in CONTROL.

The problem with the over-simplified Law of Attraction is that it’s all about being in CONTROL. I’m going to choose exactly what I want and attract that so I won’t ever have to feel anything bad or ever be uncomfortable. My life will be PERFECT.

But what is control? CHOICE? Would I CHOOSE to be in control of every detail, every aspect of my life so that my entire life experience would be limited by what I can imagine? Would I really choose such a limited existence over the limitless possibilities of an infinite Universe? Do I really want CONTROL?

Trying to be in control is like fighting the tide; there is no controlling fate or the tides of the Universe, there is only the ILLUSION of control and a constant struggle to maintain it. And it is when we struggle that we suffer.

To be truly OPEN, to be truly FREE, is to let go of the illusion of control you are bound in, stop the struggle, and let the abundance of the Universe in, knowing, trusting, that it will provide not necessarily what is wanted, but always what is needed.

Also knowing that the Universe and your own soul will demand that you do, indeed, GROW, and that to grow you will have to leave your comfort zone.

So the equation for today would go something like: NEED for CONTROL = FEAR of GROWTH, FEAR of CHANGE

CHANGE – quite possibly the most terrifying word in existence, and yet it is the path to freedom.

Because it is when we change, when we face our fears, when life throws the hard shit at us and we get UNCOMFORTABLE that we find out who we truly are; we are confronted with the dark sides of ourselves and given an opportunity to transform them; we dig deep and find strength we never knew we had; we see what it is that truly nourishes our souls; we see what’s really important. It is in those moments that we can see clearly just how in control we really are, because ultimately we are in total control of our own happiness, and that is what is truly important.

Life is a series of opportunities and choices. The Universe provides the opportunities but we control the choices we make, and every moment is a new opportunity to choose happiness instead of fear, growth instead of control, freedom instead of illusion.

“How you do anything is how you do everything” – Jack Canfield

Or as I said to a friend the other day “If you can’t be happy grocery shopping, you can’t be happy doing anything.”